Housing director Jenny Boyer, left, and shelter manager Erinn Fortson pause for a photo at an emergency shelter in Montgomery County for victims of domestic abuse. Friday, April 26, 2013. Photo by Geoff Patton/21st Century Media.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third in a six-part series exploring the many facets of the Montgomery County domestic violence agency Laurel House and the services it provides to the community.

At first — or even third — glance, the front door of the nondescript three-story house in Montgomery County doesn’t look all that special.

Still, for many of the thousands of women and children who’ve walked up to it over the past three decades — scared, scarred, desperate, dispirited and drained — the door to Laurel House’s emergency shelter for victims of domestic violence represents more than a critical, temporary refuge from the trauma and pain. It is the promise – no matter how hard to imagine at first — of a life freed from the shackles of physical and emotional abuse.

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That’s the life Tramell wants for herself.

On a recent Friday morning, sitting in a chair inside the shelter, Tramell (who chose not to disclose her last name) is slowly, quietly explaining how she came to reside there. Her tears speak volumes. So does the bruise on one cheek.

But her wan smile illustrates the latest chapter of her story in heartrending fashion — several of her bottom teeth are missing, the result of a punch to the face three days earlier by her boyfriend of more than two years. That assault sent her fleeing from his home to the shelter with nothing more than the clothes on her long-battered frame.

“I don’t like being hit, but I don’t know ... maybe it’s because I talk too much, I don’t know, I can say things out of my mouth ...” she says, her voice trailing off as her eyes well up again. After a few seconds, she wipes the tears away with her fingers and sits upright in the chair. “But I know it’s not right,” she says. “I’m just trying to find myself again and stay strong. I was always a strong, independent person, but for some reason, I don’t know what happened.”

“When I came here, dag, I felt worthless, hopeless, like nothin’,” she continues. “But when I came through that door, it was like a sigh of relief. I just felt comfortable and more safe here. I felt a little more of my confidence level came back.”

Tramell still thinks about him. Part of her still loves him. Part of her wants to go back. “But I can’t keep doing this,” she says. “I’m 50 years old; I just want to cut it and go. I can see myself goin’ somewhere, you know what I mean? Get my own place. And then I’m gonna come back and tell the people what I’ve been through. Let them know it’s OK – that I got through it.”

EACH YEAR, AN AVERAGE of 200 women and 200 children (from toddlers to teens) come through the shelter — a nine-bedroom converted Victorian duplex that Laurel House purchased in 1981, a year after the domestic violence agency was founded (for security reasons, Laurel House doesn’t publicly divulge its location). For many women and their kids, it’s the necessary first step in a multi-phased, often-long process that Laurel House advocates hope moves survivors past months, years, sometimes lifetimes of abuse.

With its nine private bedrooms and four shared bathrooms, the shelter can accommodate a maximum of 27 people, though it rarely reaches that number due to comfort and privacy concerns, says Jenny Boyer, senior director of housing and operations at Laurel House. “We’ll double up single women in a room, but we won’t put different families together,” she explains. “So if you’re a mom with one kid and the room we have available has three beds in it, it’s just going to be the two of you in there.”

Very infrequently, says Boyer, men contact Laurel House for emergency shelter, “but it’s hard to bring a male into the shelter the way it’s set up. We can’t really bring them in here, but if there’s a male who needs safety we’ll figure out a plan to make that happen, whether it’s a hotel or some other kind of housing situation.”

The bedrooms are sparsely furnished — beds, maybe a dresser or some shelves, a lamp, and that’s about it — but they’re clean and homey; the antithesis of the widely held (and sometimes true) image of a shelter as a gymnasium or other large, open space jammed with cots.

Shelter stays are limited to 30 days. Although, in extreme cases, residents can apply for a brief extension while staff tries to secure transitional housing or find other shelters in Montgomery or neighboring counties where people can go.

“We don’t have infinite space and people can’t stay forever,” Boyer laments. “That’s just the unfortunate reality. We’re very clear with people that we cannot guarantee any kind of housing in 30 days, and it’s tough because we don’t want to discourage people from coming here to be safe and stay alive, but they need to understand the reality and that’s very, very hard.”

“But we do the best we can here,” she says. “We work really hard to help people move forward with their lives, and many times we are able to find places for people to go so that they don’t have to go back out on the street or back to their abuser.”

Most of the women who stay at the shelter are between 22 and 26 years old, says Boyer, although it’s not rare to see residents in their 50s and 60s. Boyer remembers one woman from a few years ago whose 50th wedding anniversary occurred while she was staying at the shelter.

“He’d been abusive to her in so many ways,” Boyer recalls. He’d put Vaseline on her eyeglasses to make her think she was going blind, and chemicals in her shoes so her feet would burn but she didn’t know why — all these little things to make sure that ‘you don’t have any control over this and I can get you at any time.’

“At one point I think he knocked her walker out from her and it caused an injury that sent her to the hospital,” says Boyer, explaining that’s how the woman learned of Laurel House. “You’d think after 50 years, what breaks you? Maybe it was knowing the resource, having someone at the hospital say to her, ‘You know, you really don’t have to put up with this anymore.’” Boyer says the woman escaped her house while her husband was at a doctor’s appointment, and stayed at the shelter for nearly three months until they found somewhere else for her to go. Boyer has no idea where or how the woman is now. Most of the time, that’s how it is — women and families come to the shelter, stay for a few weeks, then move on, and advocates don’t know if there’s been a happy ending or not.

“I hope she’s OK,” says Boyer.

MOST OF THE PEOPLE seeking emergency shelter from domestic abuse connect with Laurel House through the agency’s toll-free, 24/7 hotline number (1-800-642-3150), although some are referred to the shelter via Laurel House’s Domestic Abuse Response Team (DART) — advocates who go to the scene of domestic violence incidents to comfort and counsel victims.

When a hotline call comes in, it’s answered by one of Laurel House’s approximately 20 full- and part-time staffers, volunteers and interns, all of whom are certified after having completed a mandated, rigorous training program overseen by the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Not every one of the more than 100 hotline calls Laurel House averages in a month is from someone seeking shelter, explains shelter manager Erinn Fortson. “Some people just need someone to talk to about their situation, or they’re a mom or a friend or a counselor who doesn’t know what to do in a situation as far as helping someone else,” she says. “So we can get anything on that hotline.”

The very first thing shelter staffers will ask a hotline caller is if they’re safe. “That’s the number-one priority — are you safe, can you talk,” says Fortson. “Sometimes they’ll call from another room while their abuser is still in the house and that’s not safe for them, so we discourage that and often we’ll say, ‘If you’re calling me while he or she is still in the house, then we can’t speak to you.’”

Once that safety is established, a screening process begins to determine if an individual is in imminent danger and if they need to come to shelter — although given the limited space, screeners will first try to determine if there are other, better options.

“A lot of times when people call, they’re in a kind of frazzled state of mind and they don’t realize they have other resources,” says Fortson. “Sometimes I’ll say, ‘Do you have other family, maybe in another state? Have you ever thought about maybe going out that way and getting away from this situation?’ It’s kind of getting them to think outside the box and making sure they’re going to the best situation next.”

Many times, callers have no idea what they should do to get out of their situation, and while screeners have a form with a series of pre-determined questions that they’re supposed to go through with the caller — when was the last abusive incident, has the victim pursued legal options, does the batterer have weapons, etc. — Fortson encourages screeners “to have a conversation with the individual, find out what’s really going on, instead of just asking question after question after question.”

Sometimes, Boyer and Fortson say, it becomes evident over the phone that a person needs to come to the shelter, but they’re balking for various reasons. “Yesterday I was talking to a woman who didn’t want to leave her job,” says Fortson, “and I said, ‘I get it, it’s hard to pick up and leave and start over, but if it means that you’re safe, then it’s worth it.’”

“If you’re dead, then the greatest job in the world doesn’t matter,” says Boyer. “Even more so than the job, it’s, ‘I don’t want to take my kids to a shelter.’ Well, I wouldn’t want to either — nobody wants to come to shelter, I totally get that. But better to be in a shelter than you be dead and them not have a mom. That’s not always the reality of domestic violence, but sometimes it’s the reality, and putting it bluntly like that, it often gives them the information they need to make the best decision they can.”

“What I’ve found is, when you do more listening than talking during the call, you’ll find that they’ll often talk themselves into coming to shelter,” Boyer continues. “When they’re telling their story out loud and they’re hearing themselves say it — sometimes for the first time in their lives — they often are like, ‘Ohhhh, crap. You’re right, I do need to do this.’ That’s when they realize, ‘I know I need help but this is a little more scary and dangerous than what I thought. I think I need to come in.’”

SHELTER STAFFERS HAVE seen people from just about every walk of life walk up to that front door. “Low income people to people of means,” says Boyer. “That police officer, that really rich and connected businessperson, that politician — over the years we’ve had all of those things. Sometimes, if you’re wealthy and you’re trying to hide, quite frankly, no one would ever think to look for you here. But we are here for everybody, and we see everybody.”

Fortson says she’s also seen the full spectrum of emotions on women’s faces when they pass through the door for the first time.

“They’re scared, or they’re exhausted, emotionally exhausted,” she says. “Sometimes they’re relieved because they’re finally in a safe place. My biggest thing is making sure they’re OK. It’s not just doing an intake, getting their information; it’s bring them in and saying ‘Are you hungry? Do you want to rest? Do you want to watch TV?’ Little things like that can put people at ease.”

Typically, if a woman has come to a shelter with her kids, either the shelter’s children’s advocate, Amanda Kelley, or another staffer will take the kids elsewhere in the house — the upstairs playroom or living room, or the sprawling playground out back behind the shelter — because “some of the stuff we talk about is inappropriate, if the women get into their abuse history,” says Fortson. “A lot of times they do want to share everything as soon as they get here. Some women don’t.”

“The playroom is also my office,” says Kelley. For the younger kids, “I bring them in there, get them accustomed, show them around, try to make the transition as easy for them as possible,” she says. “They seem to adjust pretty quickly because it’s a fun environment for them a lot of the time.” For older kids, it can be a little more difficult, “but they usually have a deeper understanding what’s really going on, so I can have good conversations with them,” Kelley says.

Meanwhile, the women are eventually asked to fill out some forms and go through shelter orientation — a process that takes about half an hour. All of the various support services available during their 30-day stay are explained — trauma counseling, legal aid, employment and housing resources and more, all overseen by a Laurel House advocate serving as case manager.

The rules are also spelled out: There’s a 9 p.m. curfew, and failure to return to the shelter for an overnight period can result in your bed being given to another survivor. There are daily household chores to be divided among residents, including meal preparation and clean-up, laundry, vacuuming, and scrubbing and mopping bathrooms. Drug or weapons possession, or threatening or physically assaulting anyone in the shelter, is grounds for eviction. There are no locks on any of the bedroom doors, but each woman is assigned a storage locker. Nightly house meetings are held from 9 until 10 p.m. and residents are “strongly encouraged” to attend.

Security procedures are discussed. The shelter has several surveillance cameras around the perimeter of the house, and the local police department — with whom Laurel House has had a very long and close relationship, says Boyer — includes the house in its regular daily patrols and can be there within minutes of an emergency situation.

Still, residents are instructed not to tell anyone the address of the shelter. Boyer says that there have been only a couple of occasions where an abuser has shown up on the front steps of the house looking for the significant other or kids. “I tell them, ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about but what I need you to do is get off the property or I’m going to have to call the cops,’ and then they leave. And if that woman is here, we relocate her because it’s unsafe.”

Women and kids are also warned about the dangers of using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other popular online and mobile apps because of geotagging and other ways their exact location could be pinpointed. “Technology has not been great for domestic violence,” says Fortson. “Everybody uses cellphones and Facebook, and a lot of people don’t know how to turn off or disable programs that show where you are.”

While safety is of paramount concern, residents are hardly on lockdown after they move in to the shelter. The women who have jobs go to work — provided they don’t fear that their abusers are searching for them and might come to their workplaces. Kids go to school — either their old school, if it’s safe, or a new school in the district near the shelter (federal law requires transportation, whether bus, taxi, or other means, to be provided for free to kids who want to continue attending their old school, regardless of the distance). Everyone’s encouraged to pursue activities outside the shelter, as long as it’s safe and they’re back by curfew.

It’s all about trying to maintain as normal a life as possible for residents, despite their worlds having been turned upside down by domestic violence.

A RECENT MID-MORNING trip to the shelter revealed relative normalcy. Two young children, who seem blissfully unaware of the chaos that brought them to this place, run through the big, comfortable living room, furnished with overstuffed sofas and wall art, including a framed poster of late Caribbean-American poet and human rights activist Audre Lorde and one of her quotes: “When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

A few women amble through the hallways or up and down the stairs — the fading smell of bleach throughout the building a remnant of the morning chores. One woman sits at a computer downstairs, another watches TV, while two more youngsters gallop from the yellow-walled playroom: a colorful, cluttered oasis of kids’ artwork, plastic toys, bins overflowing with crayons, fingerpaints and other art supplies, and “Hands Are Not For Hurting” activities books.

Downstairs, in one of the offices, a couple of women sit with advocates working on what they’re going to do after their 30 days in the shelter are up.

“Before anything, it’s about seeing how they’re feeling, how they slept last night, are they feeling depressed, are they stressed, and start from there,” says shelter advocate and case manager Peggy Krier.

“Then it’s about working on trying to get them employment, welfare, housing,” she says. “It gets really busy and it’s very stressful — the housing part is really difficult.”

In addition to the emergency 30-day shelter, Laurel House currently has 12 transitional housing units — furnished apartments of varying sizes, seven of which the agency owns and five of which are transition-to-permanent and exist through arrangements with different landlords — scattered throughout Montgomery County. For the women and/or their kids who need and qualify for transitional housing, Laurel House provides a rent subsidy, on a sliding scale, for up to two years.

After two years in the Laurel House-owned units, the resident ideally has achieved more stability — emotionally, financially and otherwise — and is in a position to move out and find their own housing, says Boyer.

With the five units not owned by Laurel House, she explains, “They’re going to come in and sign the lease with the landlord and we provide the subsidy, and then after two years, if everything is going well, then it becomes their place and we’re out of the picture — permanent housing is achieved, and we reach out and try to find another unit to replace it.”

Still, there’s far more women and families coming through Laurel House who need transitional housing than the agency can provide, so advocates spend much of their days searching for housing programs around the region.

“The little housing that’s available, everybody’s applying for the same places,” says case manager Carolyn Coleman, who says she’s a survivor of domestic violence and proof that it can be overcome. “It’s really hard, but as a survivor, I won’t accept ‘no’ for an answer,” she says. “I make a lot of phone calls, just digging and digging endlessly, being persistent, trying to find housing and resources and programs for these women to help them succeed.”

Case managers also spend time teaching the women a plethora of life skills — things such as how to balance a checkbook, or how to use a computer. “You give them short-term goals each week and see what kind of progress they’ve made and you build on that,” says Krier. “It’s a slow process, but it works and you see things happening and changing.”

“The goals thing is good,” says Lisa (not her real name), who came to the shelter a week earlier with her two kids to escape her abusive, alcoholic husband. This isn’t the first time she’s been in a shelter. “It’s hard, but I’m trying to move on because being with him keeps putting us in these dire situations,” she says.

“I’m trying to make the best of it here,” says Lisa. “Obviously it’s an adjustment after living at your own house, but it could be worse. If you have to be in a shelter, this isn’t the worst one. I don’t have a regular job or anything, but they’re helping me with some things here, and if I can get a job in the next two weeks maybe I can get a room somewhere for us. You get in these shelters and it’s not always great, so a lot of times you go back to something that’s even worse just because it’s familiar.”

“Not this time,” she says. “I’m trying to stick it out and I hope I can.”

MOST AFTERNOONS, when the kids get back to the shelter from school, Kelley spends time with them, teaching them safety planning — how to call police, or to avoid getting in the middle of a physical altercation — as well as non-violent tactics for handling anger and sadness.

“You try to have as much positive influence as possible with every single interaction with these kids, because I’ll come in one day and a family will be here, and then I’ll come in the next day and they won’t be,” she says. ‘That’s the hardest part. I remember that happening to me the first time and I cried.”

“It’s always like, I should have done more, I could have done more,” she says, “and when they’re not here it’s really, really hard knowing you probably won’t see the child again. At the same time, sometimes the children are here for 30 days and then they get into transitional housing, and you’re possibly with them for another two years. But you have to think about it as making every day count.”

At night, after the kids have gone to bed, it’s the hour-long group meeting for the women staying at the shelter.

“Sometimes it’ll be more education where we want to help them learn something about their situation to help them deal with it better,” says Minna Davis, director of counseling and supportive services at Laurel House. “Sometimes it’ll be like a support group, and it gives them a chance to vent.”

Davis supervises five interns — who are pursuing advanced degrees in either social work or counseling psychology at area colleges — who provide counseling to residents (both group and one-on-one sessions). They too go through domestic violence training administered by PCADV.

According to Laurel House’s year-end report for 2011-2012, the agency provided a total of 9,106 total hours of counseling in the shelter during that period, with each participant receiving approximately 67 hours of counseling.

“Everyone who comes in to the shelter is traumatized, either from the abuse itself or because they’re hiding out or homeless,” says Davis. “It’s post-traumatic stress disorder — all the symptoms our veterans are coming back with, these women have. So our interns talk with them about how they’re feeling and we tell them, ‘It’s not what’s wrong with you, it’s what happened to you.’ That’s an important distinction. It’s about things that were done to them by people who supposedly love them.”

Tramell says she sat quiet during the first meeting, unsure of its value, but by the second one, she says, “They made me feel like I’m not alone, and when I hear something it makes me feel like I can speak what’s inside me, too. It’s like a chain reaction.”

“It makes you relate and it gives you power and energy,” she says. “A couple of the people saying how they got through it makes me think I can get through it.”

She says her case manager has already given her a few leads for housing, and once her 30 days are up she wants to continue with counseling through Laurel House, which provides both one-on-one counseling and weekly support group meetings — at undisclosed locations in North Wales, Norristown and Eagleville — for women and men whether they’ve been through the shelter or not (information on counseling is available via the Laurel House hotline number).

“I came in here with nothing, and now I feel like I got everything,” Tramell says, tears filling her eyes again. “They made me feel special, like it was gonna be OK.”

“I feel like I’m in a good place.”

Part 4 of our series next week: A look at Laurel House’s community outreach and education programs.